


Our Bodies Safe to Shore

by iodhadh



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Murderflirting, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 18:24:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8907118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iodhadh/pseuds/iodhadh
Summary: Hawke may be a mage, and Fenris may have no idea what to make of him yet, but the fact that the man keeps taking him along on slaver-killing excursions is a big point in his favour.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tofsla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/gifts).



> Merry Christmas to my very most favourite of Tofts, who prompted me for, and I quote, "Fenris has a good day. By Fenris standards. Murder is encouraged." I'm so glad to have met you, my friend. Who could have known a year would take us this far.
> 
> Many thanks to Katie, for giving this a quick look over for me, and also for calling it "murderflirting."
> 
> I will note that though I didn't feel it was graphic enough to merit an archive warning, this does contain a couple of instances of Fenris doing that thing he does and putting his hands through people's organs. Proceed accordingly.

There was an abomination.

Fenris was starting to think there would always be an abomination. He wasn’t sure if Hawke was a magnet for the cursed things, or if they were just that unlucky, but the fact remained: once again, and to the surprise of no one in the room save perhaps the men who had been closing in on it before it transformed, there was an abomination.

They killed its captors quickly, and it didn’t take them long to dispatch the creature, either—at this point, Fenris noted with an abstract twist of irony, they were getting rather good at it.

The fight was over in moments. Varric holstered Bianca, bending to examine a locked chest at the other end of the room; Aveline sheathed her sword and shouldered her way out of the room, still bearing her shield, to make sure the warehouse was empty. As Fenris kicked the bodies of the smugglers onto their backs and dug through their pockets, Hawke dropped his staff and went to his knees next to the creature, looking down at that misshapen face with something like pity.

“This must be the girl Samson mentioned,” he said, his fingers light as he rifled through its garments with no trace of disgust. He found a note and unfolded it, his eyes quickly scanning the lines.

“News of our boy Feynriel?” Varric said, but Hawke shook his head, dark curls bouncing around his ears.

“A letter,” he said. He got to his feet, tucking it into one of his innumerable pockets, and hefted his staff. “I’ll see it delivered. Found anything useful?”

“There’s no sign of anyone else in the building,” Aveline said as she strode back into the room, her shield now slung over her back. “If Feynriel’s still in the city, they must have moved him somewhere else.”

“Hawke,” Fenris said. He had found a paper in the smuggler captain’s belt pouch.

Hawke took it from him with a careless brush of his fingers and Fenris felt his pulse jump; it was only partly the lyrium in his skin responding to Hawke’s magic. But the mage didn’t seem to notice, his attention focused on the note in his hand.

“It’s a bill of sale,” he said, frowning, and then suddenly his face went terrifyingly blank and automatically Fenris reached for his sword, certain for a moment that they were about to have a second abomination on their hands.

But Hawke just crumpled the note in his hand and shook himself, starting for the door. “Slavers,” he said, and blew out a breath. He caught Fenris’s eye over his shoulder and said, “Come on, you’ll like this. We’re going to the Undercity.”

Fenris was left slightly off balance as he fell in with the others, and was forced to remember once more that Hawke was unlike any other mage he’d ever met. He’d only been—working, call it working—with the man for a month, so he could be forgiven for falling back on his instincts so quickly, but he was coming to realize he would have to train himself out of them, at least where Hawke was concerned.

Because among all the mages Fenris had encountered, Hawke was unique. He was a southern apostate, but he didn’t run scared like the others of his kind; he drew on his magic with a deliberate, casual grace, and not a trace of the desperation so common in Kirkwall. But at the same time he was nothing like the magisters of Tevinter, who thought their power made them untouchable—for all that Fenris was coming to suspect Hawke was far stronger in magic than he liked to let on. And that, too, was a puzzle in itself, for who had ever heard of a mage who didn’t grasp for more power at every opportunity?

And yet Hawke did not. Instead he was staggeringly precise, perfectly restrained, so confident and yet so careful in his casting that he could send lightning arcing around Fenris to strike his opponent without so much as grazing him. Fenris had almost flinched the first time he felt one of Hawke’s spells go whispering around him like that, the lyrium near-singing in his skin, but after a month he was beginning to grow used to it. And that in itself should have worried him—that he was actually coming to _trust_ a mage, even one so controlled as Hawke—but instead he found himself wondering if perhaps he hadn’t found the one mage in all of Thedas who _could_ be trusted.

Hawke was turning Fenris’s entire world upside down, cheerfully and methodically and entirely unawares—and try as he might to avoid it, Fenris couldn’t stop himself liking him.

The fact that the man seemed to take a particular delight in pointing him at slaver gangs certainly wasn’t helping.

Now as they slipped into Darktown by the dockside entrance Hawke flashed him that particular infectious grin he seemed to reserve for Fenris alone, and Fenris found an answering smile pulling at his lips. “So,” Hawke said, “are you going to let me at any of them this time? Or should I just stand back and stay out of your way?”

“I might consider letting you help me,” Fenris said. “As long as you take care to truly hurt them.”

“My solemn oath,” Hawke said, raising one hand.

“Hawke,” Aveline said, “be serious. We have no time to waste.”

Hawke met Fenris’s eyes. “I promise you, Aveline, I’m not joking,” he said, and Fenris felt something vicious and lovely and _hot_ go shuddering through him.

They found the slavers down a little side path that opened onto the cliffside. Hawke casually unslung his staff and walked straight-backed and unafraid into their midst, and Fenris followed, giddy and thrumming with energy as around them the thugs grinned and leered and elbowed each other in the ribs.

The boss was a mage as well, dressed in Tevinter-fashion robes and tattooed in dark blocks across his face. He stood as Hawke approached, grinning widely under an entirely appalling moustache. “Why, look here, boys. Volunteers!” he said, to the slavers’ general acclaim. “Clap ‘em in irons, and let’s see what the Tevinters will pay for them.”

Hawke sputtered once with laughter. “Oh, I think you’ll find we’re very expensive,” he said. “Are you Danzig? I’m looking for a boy called Feynriel, and I have a bill of sale here,” he said, waving the crumpled little paper, “that says you’ve got him.”

The slaver snorted. “And why in the Maker’s name should I tell you anything?”

Hawke hummed. “Good point,” he said, and skated his gaze sideways to find Fenris already watching him. He grinned, jerking his chin at the slaver. “Make him talk.”

Fenris bit back a laugh. “I can do that,” he said evenly, and then stalked forward with a bright flash of lyrium to slam his fist right into Danzig’s chest.

The slaver collapsed to his knees with a choked gurgle, hacking and coughing more than once before he could find his voice. “Andraste’s great flaming ass!” he gasped. “How did you do that?!” He staggered to his feet. “Never mind—I’ve stashed the boy in a cave, a smuggler’s hideout on the Wounded Coast—Tevinters will be by to finish the deal today. Now, c-can I go?”

“Sure!” Hawke said, far too brightly, and then: “Oh, wait—I meant no.”

Danzig let out a strangled yell, hurling a bolt of magic at Hawke, but Hawke threw up a shield with an almost casual twirl of his staff—and then as one the slavers fell on them, and Fenris had his own fight to worry about. He summoned up the lyrium burn in earnest now, tearing through the first three thugs who descended on him with one rapid motion, and then set to battle. They had a system for this: Hawke would scatter the crowd and draw the sorcerer’s attention, while Varric picked off stragglers, and Aveline set her shield and let herself be swarmed over. It was Fenris’s job to rip through all comers as fast as possible, herding them into Varric’s arrows or wedging them between his and Aveline’s blades to crash into her shield.

Fenris liked killing slavers. It was clean, simple—righteous, even. This, more than any other fight he could take on, would do a measurable good in the world. And more than that, it satisfied something deep inside him, not just the need for vengeance but the ownership of his freedom, the knowledge that he would not be taken again.

It wasn’t as sweet as it would be to one day rip out Danarius’s heart, but it was a decent start.

There were a lot of slavers here to kill—a lot of satisfaction to be gained. And they just kept coming: every time Fenris thought they were nearly done, another wave would rush in from the warrens of the Undercity, and Varric would have to race to a new vantage point before the newcomers pinned him down. Aveline was relentless, easily shouldering hits that should have felled her and battering at the crowd around her with her shield. Fenris could smell the clean ozone scent of Hawke’s favourite lightning spells, but the man himself was lost among opponents, the only clear sign of him the flash of lights and the glow of barriers as he traded blows with the slaver.

And then abruptly the tide turned. One by one the horde broke on Aveline’s shield, and within moments the field was clear. Only Danzig was left standing among the corpses of his fellows, and Fenris readied his sword and went to Hawke’s aid. The slaver cast a panicked look around as they advanced on him, throwing up a shield as he scrambled to retreat—but Hawke thrust out his staff with a burst of purple, shattering it into splinters of light, and immediately twisted his hand in that peculiar motion that meant he was pulling on the forces of gravity. Danzig went down, flat on his back and wheezing once more as the wind was knocked out of him.

But instead of finishing him off, Hawke turned, bowing to Fenris and gesturing grandly with his staff. “All yours,” he said.

“I thought you wanted to kill some of them,” Fenris said, but he was already moving towards the slaver. “Shut up,” Fenris told him as the man started babbling, and then silenced him permanently by reaching into his throat and crushing his windpipe in his fist.

Hawke was watching him when he stood up, with a smile on his lips and a look in his eyes that Fenris had no name for. “Maybe I just like watching you tear slavers apart.”

“Hmm,” Fenris said. “Shall we make a deal? If you can knock them all over like that, you are welcome to watch me kill as many slavers as you like.”

“Sounds like fun,” Hawke said, shouldering his staff. “We’d better get going. Something tells me there’s a lot more of them waiting for us out on the Wounded Coast.”

Varric had his eyes on them, and he shook his head with a resigned sigh. “You know, I worry about you two sometimes.”

“Something to say, Varric?” Hawke said.

“Me? Not a thing, Hawke.”

“Good,” Hawke said, and then, with another smile meant just for Fenris, “now, come on. We’ve got a nest to clear out.”

Fenris snorted. “I suppose there might be one decent use for magic after all,” he said, and followed Hawke out of Darktown.


End file.
